Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row in Scottsdale, AZ serves up pub food, drinks, and a live music stage equipped with Harman’s JBL Professionalloudspeakers and Crown Audio amplifiers in an alt-country environment with a punk-rock heart and a dance club pulse, courtesy of national and local artists and DJs.
Management company Riot Hospitality Group turned to Sam Ash Music for the system. “I’ve had a longstanding relationship with Riot Hospitality Group and we’ve designed and built and retrofitted other systems for them before,” explains Jason Goldin, general manager of the Glendale, AZ Sam Ash. “They were new to the live music space but knew it was a field that we have been involved in for decades. There’s nothing music-related that we can’t do.”
Goldin collaborated with Andy Connors of Harman Professional manufacturers representative HP Marketing, based in Arizona, for additional design input. Whiskey Row’s owners asked Goldin to help design a streamlined club/live sound rig that could integrate into the venue’s video-rich environment – and accommodate the unusual sonic requirements of the elevated stage, suspended above the bar.
The system incorporates six JBL STX835 loudspeakers, four STX828 subwoofers and six JBL PRX612M stage monitors. The loudspeakers for the stage above the bar – including the stage monitors – are suspended from the ceiling, and the loudspeakers for the main stage are hung from the bottom of the stage itself. In addition, two JBL PRX415 loudspeakers serve the outdoor patio.
The loudspeakers are powered by a combination of three Crown Macro Tech 12000i, two Macro Tech 5000i and an XTi 2 Series 4002 amplifier. “They have a lot of ‘intelligent’ features to help in system management, are loud and have that presence that the classic MA Series and other Crown amps have always had,” Goldin notes.
A Soundcraft Si Expression 2 24-channel digital console with compact Stagebox and MADI digital snake, controlled wirelessly through Soundcraft’s ViSi iPad app, handle the live sound mix. A dbx ZonePro 1260 12 x 6 digital zone processor handles the audio signal processing and distributed audio to additional speakers throughout the club.
“Because the one stage is literally flying above the bar in the middle of the room there was no conventional way of hanging the system that made sense,” Goldin notes.
He decided to configure the loudspeakers as three stereo systems working together to create the desired coverage. “It turned out to be a perfect choice. The system is loud, and sounds clear and articulate from anywhere in the room.” He also commented, “clubs like this can beat the snot out of the gear. They play the system really loud, all night long, and it has been completely reliable.”